Travel, holidays, nostalgia, curiosities and my home town of Blackpool - all with a helping of good humour

Sunday, 2 June 2013

First Night on Thomson Dream

Saturday 18 May 2013. We had our evening meal in the Orion Restaurant on Deck 4. This was huge (and will be shown in a later entry). Then after the meal it was time to go to muster stations.

The safety drill always used to be held during the morning of the first day on a cruise, but since the Costa Concordia disaster of January 2012 it is now practice on Thomson ships to hold one on the evening of embarkation with a further drill the following morning for any passengers who joined the ship from later flights.

Here we cut dashing figures in our orange life jackets. Miss Franny promises she "will never let go, I'll never let go..." Hope she doesn't change her mind as fast as Kate Winslet did... Two seconds after saying it she lets go, prising his fingers off and Leo sinks into the depths...

And here is how not to wear a life jacket as demonstrated by the one who has spent years at sea... One strap under the arm and the other side over the arm... The tapes should be passed around the body and tied over the life jacket to stop it flapping up and whacking you in the face if you ever have to jump into the sea - definitely a "everything else has failed" option! Thank you Mr Macho, you may stand down... You have to understand that the exercise was seriously interrupting his photo taking mission...

Suddenly it went dark. Palma Marina at night is quite a spectacular thing to look upon and the large basilica on the far side of the bay and the old Moorish castle on the hilltop add to the atmosphere. I take this same photo every time we go there to pick up a ship...

Up on the aft deck David shows an interested audience the photos he has taken so far... He is trying to teach me port and starboard and doesn't seem all that impressed with my suggestion of "the landie side" and "the sea-ie side"!

An hour later...

Large versions of the photos: my photos are being uploaded to this set at Flickr.

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